One of the most charming contrasting color effects you can get in photography is by using infrared. An easy way to understand near-infrared light is to think of it as the color of the rainbow next to red, a color that is invisible to the human eye. But near-infrared is not the same as thermal imaging.

Digital cameras use CCD and other similar sensors to capture infrared images. Although all digital cameras available on the market are sensitive to infrared light, they are equipped with infrared-blocking filters. The main reason for this is that consumer cameras are designed to capture visible light. But sometimes these filters are used together, giving very interesting in-camera effects like false color, wood effects etc.

To start with infrared photography, all you need to have is

A digital camera that is sensitive to infrared light.

A visible-light blocking filter (e.g. a Wratten 89B filter)

Image-editing software, such as Photoshop.

Near-infrared images straight out of the camera do not always look good and are usually not as dramatic and beautiful as normally captured images. Hence, a lot of post-processing is done to enhance these images. Some techniques used in post-processing are equalization, focus shift, small aperture, light leaks, digital false color, halo, etc.

Below, we present a selection of over 40 beautiful infrared images. Some of these images have undergone heavy post-processing, and all of these examples display the names of the photographers, along with links to their websites.

Infrared Photography Buzz8384“Offering the most comprehensive source of info on digital infrared photography on the net.” This website presents technical info about cameras and accessories used for infrared photography.

Vailancio Rodrigues is a web ninja who bakes semantic muffins. Apart from that he is also interested in Motion Graphics, Visual Effects, Photography and knows little bit of Physics due to his college education . He is from Goa - a beautiful tropical paradise in India.

Martin

Eddy Munn

shasta

Some very nice pictures in here, I’d love to try that technique out myself… It’s a shame these filters are so expensive.

Anyway, I still have to mention that I think some of these pictures are ONLY done with post-processing and don’t have anything to do with actually using IR filters. For example: the works of Jernej Verbovsek, G2-Studio Photography or Corrado Borean dont really seem like IR-fotography. Cause first of all, using a IR-filter you need a way longer time of exposure than for a normal photo to allow enough infrared light to get through. Thus it might be difficult to take a picture that captures any moving subjects (like a duck, a waving surface of water, people…) Secondly, leaves and grass reflect infrared light almost to 100%, which is how this great effect of white trees in front of dark skies is created. So anything with dark leaves or forcibly short exposure time might just be a photoshop fake. Not that I’d think of that as bad… I’ve tried that myself, and you get pretty good results for less money. I’m just mentioning this for general enlightenment.;)
(Of course there are filters that don’t strictly filter out every light wave frequency except IR, and you could get “in between” results with them, but i guess what’s been done here is really just photoshopping of normal pictures.)

BTW: For anyone who wants to try out IR-photography: Before running to your local photoequipment dealer, make sure that your camera is actually IR sensitive (because this varies considerably among normal digital cameras). This can easily be done by taking a long-time-exposure photo of a IR remote device (like most standard tv remote devices) in a dark room while constantly pressing a button on the device. If you see the little IR bulb glow on the photo, you’re free to run off to the photo shop…;)

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26

sOliver

I created this site Digital Infrared Photos a few ago, if you want to get more info about infrared photography.
Actually I was happy to see that I have completely different photos on my site except maybe 1.

HGurcann

carterado

Ekios

Anjte

Plenty of nice images but i doubt half of them were actually shot like they are shown here. I.e. with IR light and using blocking filters for other wavelengths. The rest is Photoshop and other tools at work. So please don’t call it photography when it isn’t. Also I suppose a number of the photos are from stock image libraries and or combinations with these.

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35

Nicole

Just because a photo has been photo-shopped does not mean that it isn’t photography. If they took the pic with a camera- that makes it clear enough for me what it is. Are you going to say that a cropped photo isn’t photography? It sounds clear that you are just hatin’ on some of the most beautiful pics I have ever seen. Some people are just more creative with the resources available. You should try it.

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36

Stuart

ogon

@shasta – you can have normal exposure time if you modify your DSLR camera. All you have to do is to remove an IR filter from the sensor. This filter filters out the infrared light spectrum and this is the reason of very long exposure time.

Michael

You can also have your camera converted to focus on the IR portion of the spectrum and avoid using the opaque filters. Check out the list to see if it is possible to convert your camera model.http://www.lifepixel.com/IR.htm

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50

Jake-DesignerFied

Stickler

Here’s the thing. If those pictures were not made with the technique described, then they don’t belong here. It doesn’t matter if they’re beautiful or not. It just means that the description is inaccurate if you chose to include those.

And a true IR photo is still PHOTOgraphy, since IR is light (photo) and you’re making an image (graph). In fact, you can get IR film and use it like any other film. Photoshop is another thing still.

Tim

Br&amp;on

These are some beautiful photos, though some of them are not IR at all, i read someones comment about black and white IR, and its true they come out alot better.
I still consider myself amatuer for sure, but ive been told that i have some good work on here. http://bwasserphotos.blogspot.com
Though some of them i admit are garbage.

varco brayn

Katie

Jerry

Beautiful set of IR images. Fantastic work from some very talented individuals. There is a LOT of post processing involved with these photos, but that in no way reflects negatively on the artists or their work. Quite the contrary. It is very obvious that they have all captured these scenes in the IR spectrum of light using various value IR pass filters, and yes, most have probably come from cameras that have been modified to remove the internal IR blocking filter. It is next to impossible to post process a photo taken in visible light and come up with results like these. The light captured is just very different.

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